Mortada Mansour, center, was in court on Monday, representing former ruling party members seeking seats in Parliament.Credit
Pauline Beugnies for The New York Times

MANSOURA, Egypt — Mortada Mansour, the man accused of directing the notorious Battle of the Camel during the Tahrir Square protests in February, came to a courtroom in this provincial city to defend the right of former regime stalwarts to run in the coming parliamentary elections.

“If I had participated in the Battle of the Camel, people would be throwing rocks at me, not hailing me the way they are,” said Mr. Mansour, perhaps Egypt’s most flamboyant lawyer, wheeling his black Cadillac Escalade through narrow streets with one hand while waving the other at well-wishers.

He denies having set loose camels with riders who beat protesters in Tahrir Square, but believes strongly that supporters of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former president, should compete for a role in the country’s future. “If you want a democracy, just let the people be, and they will choose who they want,” he said.

Two weeks before Egypt’s first parliamentary vote since a popular uprising toppled Mr. Mubarak on Feb. 11, much of the electorate seems obsessed with the idea that former Mubarak loyalists will somehow steal the government back via the ballot box.

Scores of lawsuits have been filed to block former members of the once-dominant National Democratic Party, or N.D.P., from running. A Web site called “Imsik Feloul,” or “To Catch a Remnant,” tries to ferret them out. Seemingly every political rally or conference starts with questions from the public about who might be a remnant — the epithet of choice — and how to prevent their resurgence.

In Cairo on Monday, Egypt’s High Administrative Court froze a ruling from the lower court in Mansoura that had barred all former regime candidates from running in the surrounding province, meaning that for now they can run.

“God is great!” cried several former N.D.P. members in the gallery, waving aloft their membership cards from the party, which was legally dissolved in April.

Given the patchwork of cases and decisions from around the country, the judges in Cairo said they would issue a blanket ruling shortly, but given Monday’s judgment, they were expected to allow former party members to run.

“Feloul,” coming from the Arabic word for the scattered remnants of a defeated army, is flung at anybody who expresses sympathy for the Mubarak regime. Voters hunt for them under practically every campaign banner, not to mention every rock.

“The Egyptian street does not want them,” said Sherif Diab, 26, a thin, intense, unemployed lyricist who started the Web site, which is fashioned as the Ghostbusters of the regime remnant world.

Operating out of makeshift offices in a once-grand Beaux-Arts building in downtown Cairo, volunteers pore over election lists looking for former N.D.P. loyalists who have moved districts or changed their names. Brief biographies and pictures of thousands of them have been posted on the site, divided by province.

The remnant hunters do not concern themselves with the more than three million rank-and-file members of the N.D.P., Mr. Diab said, concentrating instead on the roughly 15,000 who played important roles in the Mubarak administration, party institutions like the policy committee, Parliament or provincial governments. Nonparty members considered central in the system are also singled out.

“They rigged elections, engaged in thuggery,” Mr. Diab said, estimating that the N.D.P. remnants were now scattered among some 17 different parties, some new, some old. “People want to completely eradicate remnants from the system because they are responsible for the corruption that pervaded Egypt.”

The fear is not unlike the accusations leveled against the Muslim Brotherhood under the old regime — that stealth candidates who run as independents or in camouflaged parties will coalesce into a powerful bloc once in Parliament.

The young organizers of the “To Catch a Remnant” Web site have joined the fray by working the streets in cities where former N.D.P. Parliament members are expected to do well. In Qena, for example, they burned campaign posters and printed up 25,000 fliers to hand out, Mr. Diab said.

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“The youth of the revolution will not just stand by and watch the remnants take over the Parliament!” screamed one flier.

Prominent N.D.P. members still active in politics keep a low profile. Dr. Hossam Badrawi was part of a small circle of politicians around Gamal Mubarak — the president’s younger son and heir, now on trial on corruption charges — who said they were working for reform from within.

Dr. Badrawi, a former Parliament member, has regrouped that circle into the Federation Party. He did not respond to numerous telephone calls and e-mails requesting an interview.

“I hate the word feloul!” said Hader el-Baghdady, a former N.D.P. Parliament member running for the Conservative Party. “I predict a lot of honest former N.D.P. members will be voted back into power because their constituencies know them.”

Mr. Baghdady denied reports that his presence alone ignited a riot in the office that registers candidates — it was merely that a judge he knew let him cut to the front of a long line, he said, and he calmed the situation by ordering tea all around.

The remnants do have their defenders — a Facebook page called Feloul Cafe supports their rights — but most of the outpouring goes the other way. “Remnants metastasize like cancer,” warned one recent posting on Twitter, the platform for a vociferous anti-remnant campaign.

A newspaper columnist recently suggested that the regime remnants should be divided into categories: beginner, intermediate and advanced, with the latter category reserved for former ministers and the like.

At the Mansoura courthouse, those observers who were not applauding his every word put Mr. Mansour into the advanced category. Mr. Mansour, who bills himself as the most famous and most expensive lawyer in Egypt, is running for Parliament in a district near Mansoura and is weighing a presidential run in a year.

Never mind that he spent 17 days in jail this year on charges of dispatching men on camels and horses into Tahrir Square to beat protesters. (In the version of events popular among remnants, the Battle of the Camel began after the animals wandered into the square and the protesters started to beat them.) Mr. Mansour was acquitted initially, but the court case is not over.

In court last week to defend the right of a former N.D.P. member to run, Mr. Mansour said that he had never joined the party himself and summarized the accusations that he is a fifth columnist — working clandestinely to undermine democratic reforms and return the Mubarak loyalists to power — as character assassination. His popularity on the streets stems from the fact that he was once elected president of one of Egypt’s two main soccer clubs, Zamalek.

He dismissed a video posted online that seems to show him at a counterdemonstration before Mr. Mubarak fell, defending the president’s record and saying the Tahrir protesters should be ejected from the square.

The soundtrack is insufficient proof, he said, repeating the argument that the protesters should have left and that Mr. Mubarak kept the country stable. Dressed in an expensive blue suit and gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, he repeatedly disparaged the revolutionary youth and several presidential candidates as paid agents of foreign governments.

“We should build instead of just protesting,” Mr. Mansour said, a common refrain among those accused of supporting the old regime.

“Remnant,” muttered a lawyer watching Mr. Mansour leaving the courthouse, repeating it four times but avoiding a direct confrontation. “He does not belong to the revolution.”

Dina Salah Amer contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 15, 2011, on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: In Egypt, Fears of Mubarak’s Outlawed Party, ‘the Remnant,’ Loom Over Vote. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe